How to freak out your fans…

By merlinofchaos, Contributing Editor

…try to rush your kicking team out on the field while the announcers are screeching that they don’t think there’s going to be time to kick the winning field goal…and your kicker, who has uncharacteristically missed two already this game manages to kick it right down the center of the goal posts.

We screamed so loud that our poor four month old child had to be consoled that no, nothing was wrong, we were actually quite happy! Poor thing could be in for some scary Sundays this season if the Broncos keep doing that to us!

A couple of days ago I wrote that I wasn’t with the rest of Bronco Nation in freaking out about our defense. I believe in DJ Williams. I remember his rookie year, and I accept that he’s making a tough transition, and that he’ll get it. And did he get it today. He was definitely doing a good job out there today.

The defense did a fine job. They gave up just the one touchdown and made a number of extremely impressive third down stops. Marshawn Lynch did fairly well, but he did not run all over us like the naysayers were predicting. As I thought, the defense was fine.

No, what I was most worried about as Jay Cutler’s accuracy. And the jury’s still out there. He made some absolutely excellent passes. But a couple of them were unfortunately errant. And a couple of picks were missed. On the other hand, he got 300 yards, but only one touchdown. With all those yards, he really should’ve gotten at least one more into the endzone. 23 of 39 is 58.9% — which is actually pretty darn close to where we want to see him. Ideally we want to see 62%. And the Bills’ pass defense isn’t as good as it was last year, so I think we should have been closer to 62%. However, I’m basically satisfied with that part of the game. I am worried about his poor decisions under fire, but he’s a rookie. These things happen.

What did I want to see?

1) Travis Henry — 23 attempts for 139 yards, giving him a 6 yard average. I can’t complain about those numbers, not a bit. Selvin Young had to come in a couple of times to spell him, and did okay, though that bobbled catch was unfortunate.

2) Pass protection in the backfield — To be honest, I need to watch the game again with an eye for this, because I missed a lot of it, but Cutler seemed to have plenty of time in the pocket and I don’t immediately remember Sapp getting bowled over at any point. I think we did good here.

3) Pass protection on the line — Only one sack, and that came on a pretty broken play where the initial rush came from the outside and Cutler got out of it. I think our protection on line did quite well.

4) Picks — We need 5 picks every 4 games for Bly and Bailey and we got 0. Elvis Dumervil got a pick. Of course, Losman didn’t throw to the corners very often, and when he did he was quite good at putting the ball into safer spots. This meant that the Bills relied largely on their running game. Still, I was a bit disappointed. There was one instance where Bly got his hands on the ball meant for Evans, but he wasn’t able to get ahold of it. That would’ve been a sexy pick, had he gotten it.

5) Sacks — Two sacks, one from DJ Williams and one from John Lynch. I didn’t see that one coming. Crowder was out. Dumervil did get a couple of pressures, but there was one play where Dumervil had Losman to rights, but he saw it coming and took off; and Dumervil didn’t look like he really put it all into getting him. I don’t think we succeeded here.

Our special teams didn’t look so hot. We gave up a special teams touchdown, and we let the Bills have excellent field position too often. Hixon danced backward and lost yardage once, and his blocking, overall, wasn’t so hot. However, I won’t take this is a good judge of our special teams yet. The Bills are consistently a great special teams team, and even at our best I don’t expect our special teams to do much more than above average.

For all the offense we did, we kept choking when we got toward the endzone. On the plus side, we had a lot of good third downs, and that counted for a lot. We came out better than we did in the preseason, but the Bills are not a particularly good team right now. The fact that it was this close is not encouraging, but a win is a win. And the offense showed a lot more than they ever did last year. Brandon Marshall had exactly the kind of game I believed he could. Javon Walker had 3 balls hit his hands but weren’t receptions. Two of them were just drops; 1 of them I’m not sure I’d call a drop. Either way, he had that happen in preseason, and seeing those in the regular season is disappointing.

Overall, I give the team a C+; we need to see that offense continue to click in the endzone. We need to see the defense get a couple more sacks. Special teams needs to do a little better. I think we’re on the verge of being an excellent team, and if we can take that next step, we can be a great team. We did open the season on the road, and there’s a lot of new faces on the team and in the staff. I am encouraged and I am cautiously optimistic that we are a team that can go deep into the playoffs.